Tadej Pogačar is starting to look and sound weary.
Not “I’m gone, I’m dead” weary, but appearance weary.
He’s at the tail-end of an almost two-week long press junket through Asia, which has included exhibition criteriums in Singapore and Japan and the multiple promotional events for them including interviews with local media and the invited international press.
The beginning of October is a weird time to interview WorldTour athletes. Come the end of November they’re typically dying for a chat, but not so much in October. October is like concurrent Sundays. They’ve talked at length about the season with levels of introspection generally reserved for therapy, and they can’t venture much on 2024 campaigns as teams don’t formalise their plans until December.
The first group interview Pogačar does in Singapore doesn’t provide any more insights into his all-conquering character than what we already know, but it does still generate lots of headlines.
He has an insatiable appetite for competition and would do every race if he could – from the Classics to the Grand Tours and the week-long stage races in between. The Tour de France in which he has developed – I later find out – a very real rivalry with double champion Jonas Vingegaard, wasn’t his sole focus in 2023, nor does it rate a mention in his top moments.
“I still don’t know anything about my [2024] programme. The heart says to do everything, but you cannot do everything,” he says.
Vingegaard, absent from the exhibition events overseen by Tour de France organiser ASO, has apparently rated his suitability to the course for next year’s La Grande Boucle as an eight out of 10. So, naturally, Pogačar gives it a nine.
“It’s supposed to finish where I train every day,” he says.
Pogačar arrives at a hotel lobby, with his sports manager Alex Carera, to around a dozen awaiting cycling journalists.
The 25-year-old sits down in the middle of them, Carera within earshot, and while he doesn’t look intimidated or uncomfortable, it’s not an environment that is exactly conducive to openness or even sentimentality.
Pogačar, when asked about backroom staff and specifically the departure of former sports director Allan Peiper – a mentor to him when he first joined UAE Team Emirates in 2019 – seems either not to fully understand the question or chooses not to fully answer it.
Peiper, who has bravely fought a long battle with cancer, was due to return to the squad…
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